New Year's Day gift (royal courts)

At the Tudor and Stuart royal courts in Britain it was traditional to give gifts on New Year's Day, on 1 January. Records of these gift exchanges survive, known as "gift rolls", and provide information about courtiers and their relative status. A similar custom at the French court was known as the étrenne. Gift-giving on New Year's Day at the court of King Arthur is the setting of the 14th-century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Historians often analyse these gift economies following the ideas of the anthropologist Marcel Mauss and Bronisław Malinowski's description of the Kula ring.

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